Tony Grey

Few would argue that the human condition is bereft of reverence. But in practice these days it would seem so at times. The infectious irony and scepticism of the postmodernist age have tended to unsettle our culture. Even if, as some people claim, we have moved on and postmodernism is dead, it rules us from its grave in so many social aspects.

Reverence is one. Indeed being called ‘irreverent’ can be a compliment. Used this way, it’s meant to be an ironic response to pretentiousness and pomposity or a sceptical comment on authority. It speaks of a pride that will not bow to pressure. Arguably, the origins of its recent appearance lie in the turning away from authoritarian elements of religion and upper-class dominance. Dada, shock art, punk rock and some rap music are a few of its manifestations in the aesthetic field.

Admittedly irreverence’s popularity doesn’t deny the value of reverence but it can tend to reduce its appeal and pave the way to trivialization.

More insidious though is the palpable neglect in showing reverence, which is so prevalent in our time-compressed and Internet – distracted society. And the sirens of narcissism, which seduce attention away from anything outside the self, coddle the disregard. We may not notice the diminution but are impoverished by it. Exceptions of course exist but their paucity advocates the case.

But, the veins of reverence run deep and eternal through the human condition, no matter how often ignored. As Sophocles, the Greek playwright, who signalled wisdom even in his name, said, “Reverence is not subject to the death of men; they live, they die, but reverence shall not perish.”

What is the definition of reverence? The Oxford Dictionary calls it a feeling of great respect or admiration for somebody or something. Paul Woodruff in his book on the subject adds awe and shame.

Shame might seem a curious word to use when defining reverence. He means the acknowledgement of insignificance in the presence of something greater than oneself. Perhaps humility might have been used, but shame is more piquant.

Sophocles held that “shame shares the throne with Zeus”. That shame can sit in such an exalted place illustrates its critical role in punishing behaviour that falls short. This would include failing to show reverence or exhibiting hubris, it’s the antagonistic opposite. It could be said that shame in this context assists in defining reverence for it acts as a consequence of negating it.

According to Woodruff, and it seems to be the case, reverence now has no part in discussions of ethics or political theory. It’s even left out of discourse on ancient cultures whose fundamental norms were based on it. Respect is afforded a place, but not in its evolved form, the form which gives breath to reverence and transforms it into one of the higher virtues.

Perhaps the main reason why reverence is so often missing in action now is that it’s integral to religion and identified with it. As a result, it’s accused of being inappropriate to the secularizing world we find ourselves in, seen too much as a servant of an aging master. The concern is understandable but born of misconception.

While religious devotion does indeed express reverence and always has, it’s not the only form. What can bring out the feeling is diverse, accommodating both religious and secular states. Though different in form its substance is the same, for it emerges from the interior of the person, a source common to all human beings, no matter what their beliefs.

We can have reverence for many things, small or large, and in different degrees, from mere common daily interactions to the most sublime. All are valid, though some are more profound than others. For example, one may feel reverence towards a display of excellence in sport and the players responsible, or towards the beauty of water lilies on a pond, or the grandeur of the universe.

They all evoke awe, heightened respect and a sense of humility, to a varying extent, by comparison to one’s own lack of importance. The comparison amplifies the feelings and helps to generate the contact with reality that reverence affords.

The origins of reverence go back to a time beyond mind, to the first occasion that Homo sapiens, and perhaps its forbears, stared at the terrible sky in a thunderstorm and wondered how to relate to its power.

Over the years, religious practices emerged to respond, to give expression to the feelings that so naturally arise in the presence of what is observed to be ultimate force – that which is scarcely knowable.

Coterminous with human consciousness is the experience of wonder, the transcendent extension of awe and the soft energy that gives life to reverence. The feeling is linked to the emotions that inhabit the place of the spiritual; experiencing reverence is to reach for infinity.

Each of us has a spiritual dimension, whether we are religious or not, just as we have a mental and physical one, and all must be actuated if we are to consider ourselves healthy. The spiritual is where our deeper sense of meaning resides. Indeed it has an influential effect on our values and concept of self. One might say it animates vision, the aspect of life that raises our gaze above the mundane.

“Where there is no vision the people perish”, says Proverbs. And in the poetry of Robert Browning, “Ah, a man’s reach must extend his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

The ancient Greeks give us guidance on reverence. For them, a well-ordered life required reverence for the gods, the ultimate authority, and the creative force of the world. In essence, it was the recognition of how puny and weak we humans are in relation to the cosmic energy that controls us. It’s a sense that demands a humbling of the self, the antidote to hubris, the sin so severely punished by the gods.  Humans are an expression of that cosmic energy, and hubris is a separation. It’s the separation that’s the nature of sin.

The Greeks well knew the need to quell the unruly and destructive vigour of the self when it bursts its natural limits and acts above its right. Their myths abound in cases of it.

One of the more famous is the punishment of Marsyas for hubris, which is seen to be the cruellest of all assaults on reverence.  The most notable musician of his time, he boasted he was best not only among mortals but also among the gods. His pride propelled him not to pay reverence to Apollo, god of music, but to challenge him to a competition.  Though shocked and angry, the god accepted because he could not tolerate the chance that, if he refused, he might be considered afraid of a mere mortal, or, even worse, not as good.

At the grand event, which all Olympus watched in rapt attention, the Muses were the judges. Marsyas played the flute which had been discarded by Athena because it distorted the beauty of her face, and Apollo the lyre. The prize was that the winner could treat the loser any way he wished. Marsyas gave a brilliant performance, impressing the Muses. Then Apollo played, just as beautifully. They were considered equal for a while but eventually, the music god forged ahead to win the contest.

He took his prize by having Marsyas flayed alive and his skin made into a wine sac, his blood flowing downhill to join the river Meander in Anatolia. And so, humans were warned.

The myth takes account of the tinge of fear that has, over time, lurked in the feeling of reverence, at least when it’s expressed in the presence of the divine. The emotion springs from an awareness of the potential for retribution, a reaction that inevitably occurs when humans fail to observe the appropriate relationship they are born to have with the force whose nature is above theirs. The concept ranges well beyond Greece; it appears in the Old Testament where Proverbs states, “The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom: and before honour is humility.

In the Iliad, Homer describes what can happen if even a king fails to display reverence when due.  Agamemnon refused to free Chryseis, the beautiful daughter of Apollo’s priest, taken as a prize of war, despite her father’s pleas. Angry at the Commander in Chief’s failure to show reverence to him by complying with his priest’s entreaties, the archer god shot the Achaean troops with plague-tipped arrows. Ashamed of his impiety, Agamemnon redeemed his error by returning Chryseis to her father. Apollo was appeased and stopped the plague.

So important to the Greeks was reverence that Plato put into the mouth of his interlocutor, Protagoras, “And so Zeus, fearing that our whole species would be wiped out, sent Hermes to bring reverence and justice to human beings, in order that these two would adorn society and bind people together in friendship.”

Accordingly, to the ancients, reverence, both to feel and to show it, was a vital part of the universal order of things, what Pythagoras called the cosmos. And it was more. Reaching out to feel a connection with something qualitatively so much greater than us is liberating. The sense of inferiority, the acknowledgement of which starts the process of reverence, loses its sting as it melds into a positive relationship with power. The transformation kindles a sense of mellowness, of well -being.

Today, in the minds of many people, the fear of retribution so common in the past has evolved into a different state. For them, the relationship to the object of reverence is love, a love when expressed inadequately leads to a feeling of shame – punishment yes, but internal, not meted out by an external agent.

Much comment is made about the rising anxiety levels in our society, particularly among the young. A common form of anxiety stems from perceived loss of control in the midst of competing pressures, particularly from social media.

In the action of reverence, especially in its higher form, personal desires, which are dependent on the ego, are transcended. And so anxiety, however, caused dissolves, at least for a time, like a shower clearing a muggy day.

The longevity of its existence demonstrates that the condition of reverence is natural to humanity. It’s fundamental to what consciousness provides. Neuroscientists tell us it’s a mental experience of a bodily state. It releases oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin, neurotransmitters that produce feelings of pleasure. The deeper the state of reverence, the more powerful is the neurotransmission.

For the Greeks and for all people, before and subsequent, reverence is shown in ceremony, no matter how complex or simple. Traditionally the ceremony is in the form of ritual observed in places of worship where the distractions of the material world are excluded and quietness seeps into the gap to allow the state to reveal itself. Symbolic acts are performed which concentrate the feeling, encouraging it to penetrate the deepest regions of the soul. But these are not the only means for aiding its expression.

It can be celebrated in any manner, through observing silences in public gatherings, and candlelight vigils in the street for the sad remembrance of tragedy, for example. To commemorate the centenary of the Armistice after the catastrophe of the First World War, two thousand people assembled at the War Memorial in Canberra to feel, with bowed heads in a minute of solemn solidarity, the sacrifice of sixty-two thousand Australian soldiers, and others who gave their lives for freedom. And of course, funerals are held in venues, both religious and secular, so as to connect natural affection for the deceased with a sense of the venerable but tenuous status of human life in the universal order of things.

The power of reverence crossed national borders when the Queen visited Dublin in 2008 and laid a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance to commemorate the Irish republicans who fell in their struggles against England. She reverentially bowed her head, an act of royal grace possible only in contemplation of the unity of humanity. The Irish Prime Minister said on television later that day all hearts in Ireland melted.

In a lighter vein, reverence is shown through the ceremony of displaying national flags and playing or singing anthems. Sometimes, though, national anthems can touch the soul. At the recent Rugby World Cup in Japan, for example, the sincerity of both teams while they were singing, often at the top of their voices, showed a profound reverence, generated by awe-inspiring awareness that they were responsible for the prestige of their country. For the moment, the emotion melded them not only into their team but also into the greater unity of their nation.

Recently I attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a major extension of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Contemplation of art’s role in contacting the human spirit would be enough to inspire reverence in itself, for art speaks its language, but on this occasion, it was enhanced by a particularly moving Welcome to Country. These recognitions can often be perfunctory, but this time not so. Six young Aboriginal children, in turn, gave it in such innocence and sincerity, that everyone in the large audience was deeply touched.

For a ceremony or ritual to express reverence the participant must have the “right feelings” as Woodruff says. For this, authenticity is vital. Of course, that doesn’t always happen; many of us merely go through the motions, stripping the exercise of substance. In fact, concentration on the frequency of this hypocrisy is one of the reasons reverence has lost its prominence in the realm of human behaviour. King Claudius’ admission in Hamlet comes to mind,

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

There are many agents for reverence. Music is one of them. It has long been composed to elicit the feeling; sacred music as we know it dates back to Gothic voices and beyond. It’s the sound of the soul. As arguably the most emotional of the arts, music can go straight to the amygdala, the emotional heart of the brain. It stirs; it resolves. In its religious form, it’s a pathway in the spiritual realm, leading through the valley of perfect security.

Brahms’ German Requiem shows this. Its soaring notes lift us out of ourselves, high into a transcendent sphere of unity beyond the state of death, and its resolutions calmly guide us to a place of eternal peace.

Secular music can also express the sounds of reverence. One of them is a mystery, when it expresses the wonder of the unknown. The slow and melodic otherworldly strains of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis carry us into places that we can never know but would love to know.

With the rise of the environmental movement in recent decades is a growing respect for nature, a sensibility that evolves into reverence at times when life’s activity is allowed to pause in quiet for a while. Ceremonies as simple as merely standing in wonder of its presence are sufficient. Montaigne advises us, “We must judge with more reverence the infinite power of nature.” And Immanuel Kant said, “Two things awe me most, the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.”

These thoughts, in one manner or another, I imagine, must move the brush of landscape painters no matter what their style, at least in the more reflective ones. Reverence can insinuate the wonder of nature into the artist’s soul where it urges the creative spirit to express its form on the canvas. Some of nature’s essence is captured, but whatever it is, reverence is the godfather.

Reverential thoughts about the land have animated Australia’s indigenous people since the time of their creation stories. At a point, before it became studded with tourists, I used to visit Ubirr rock in East Arnhem Land (in the Northern Territory). Far distant from human habitation, the rock is a weathered sandstone promontory rising out of the ground like a giant mushroom. Surrounding rocks at lower levels make the climb easy.

At sunset, Aboriginal people, and some white fellas too (who I knew to be atheists but reverent towards nature) would go to sit on the flat top. It oversees a wide flood plain bordered with sandstone escarpment and eucalyptus trees modestly blue in the distant haze. As the light slides away over the ancient land, magpie geese, whistling kites and other birds fly to their nests across the field of vision in black silhouette, and stars begin to emerge, shy in the twilight.

The demeanour of the people, silent and motionless, and the concentrated calm on their faces manifest a profound reverence, one whose awe and wonder transcend the material state and touch the omnipotence that swallows all ego. In its spell, truth can be sensed, not fully understood, but felt. And the hands of unity are joined.

^ 

Most of inland Australia is gripped by one of the worst droughts the country has experienced, certainly since European settlement began 230 years ago. The world’s oldest landmass has always been prone to long dry periods, but what is new is that Australia now has a population of over 25 million that needs to be fed, clothed and housed and this puts unprecedented pressure on an already fragile environment. Before European settlement its inhabitants would have numbered around 300,000.

It will rain again, that is sure, but we cannot say when. In the meantime regional communities over most of the country are suffering and bushfire smoke has been choking our cities as major fires break out around large metropolitan areas, Sydney particularly.

What the country lacks, and it certainly has the resources to alleviate the situation, is water. It is ironic that this drought crisis is gripping the land at the same time as a divisive debate over climate change and what Australia should do about it.

The drought and climate change are connected, and so is the solution to both.
Climate change warriors are demanding an end to all carbon dioxide-generating energy sources, but this country needs reliable energy to drive its economy and employment and to help produce the water it requires to mitigate the effects of the frequent droughts.

The answer is emissions-free nuclear energy, but not from the large conventional power stations with which the world is familiar. Rather it’s from one of the most exciting nuclear developments since the industry emerged in the 1950s – a new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs). They offer arguably the best entry point for Australia.

The detectable momentum politically in recent years to consider the nuclear option has resulted in the federal parliamentary committee tasked with inquiring into its use in Australia recommending that the ban be lifted, in particular on the use of the new generation of small reactors.
Committee chairman, Ted O’Brien, has declared, “Nuclear energy should be on the table for consideration as part of our future energy mix. Australia should say a definite ‘No’ to old nuclear technologies but a conditional ‘Yes’ to new and emerging technologies such as small modular reactors.

These are reactors of less than 300 Megawatts electric and can be built down to 5 Megawatts – suitable for mining operations. The technology is an adaptation from nuclear ships, submarines in particular. The global home of innovation, Silicon Valley, is abuzz with entrepreneurs who have started up companies to commercialise this technology.
SMRs are manufactured in factories to standardised designs that offer economies of scale and can be delivered on trucks to remotes sites. They have real potential to drive the flexible scale desalination plants Australia needs for its growing population. For instance, they could desalinate brackish underground water, far away from the sea.

Because they are so much smaller than conventional plants, SMRs are less scary to the public. And they require lower investment.
As the peak body dealing with climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has declared the world needs carbon-clean nuclear power to stem the tide of global warming. Indeed, they have said their target cannot be met without a contribution from nuclear.
Already it supplies 11per cent of the world’s electricity, from 450 reactors across 30 countries. And 13 other nations are building capacity.

Acknowledged by the IPCC, nuclear and hydro are the only CO2–free sources of base load power, the lack of which has so markedly penalized South Australia’s reliance on capricious renewables. As Canada has shown, hydro, while plentiful there in places, cannot do the job alone.
The answer to Australia’s droughts and this country’s need to respond to climate change is obvious then; small emission–free modular reactors to provide continuous reliable power to desalination plants, large or small, and a network of pipes to take the water to where it is needed inland.

So why aren’t we doing it?
Notwithstanding this obvious solution and the manifest improvements to safety, waste disposal and cost structure for nuclear achieved since the issue was last addressed, federal legislation passed 20 years ago prohibits Australia from ever using nuclear power.
We export uranium all over the world but cannot have a nuclear industry of our own. This is absurd.
Criticism by activists on the grounds of high cost and problems with waste disposal that might have applied a decade or more ago are no longer valid.
If the government accepts the substance of the parliamentary committee’s recommendations, the ban will be wholly or partially removed to allow use of the new generation of reactors. Then the market should decide whether and to what extent nuclear should be deployed. As the drought in inland Australia drags on and the bush fires burn, it is a compelling solution.

Australia’s apparent lack of preparation to confront the ongoing bushfire crisis seems shortsighted; the next time they flare up, as inevitably they will, it would be unconscionable. As reported this week, our bushfires are happening three times more often than a century ago, while over the same period the country’s population has increased five times.
Why was it that our defences against this season’s fires were allowed to be so comprehensively overwhelmed?

The answer requires no nuance. We were scandalously unprepared as was demonstrated by our nation’s leader going on an overseas holiday at the beginning of the crisis, apparently unaware of our lack of readiness. Very few others were any wiser.It is not the time to argue about the causes of the fires, except for those deliberately lit, because our country will always be prone to them, in various degrees of severity.

But we need an urgent solution, and it will not be enough to undertake conventional measures before the next onslaught, such as prudent back burning and access clearing in the winter, and deploying more waterbombers, firefighting equipment and personnel, important though they are. We should summon technology to the cause – and the technology exists to provide us with an early warning system, which can be launched before the next fire season. In some ways, it would be reminiscent of the British system that alerted their fighter pilots to the presence of enemy bombers in the Second World War.

For Australia’s purpose, the system would operate to remotely sense fires while they are still small enough to be readily suppressed. For years scientists have been developing thermal infra-red sensors that can manage this. They can be deployed in aircraft, drones or on satellites to fly over and map vast areas prone to fires. GPS will pinpoint the relevant locations to within a metre.

Gregory Clark, a physicist and former chief operating officer and president of Loral Space Systems, one of the world’s largest satellite manufacturers and operators, is confident we will soon use satellites to detect fires in their early stages. He says all the technology required is available and would be carried on low earth-orbiting satellites, at a height of 600-1000 kilometres. “They are cheap – a million dollars or less.Only one satellite would be required, though more would improve the frequency of coverage. They would orbit the country every two to four hours, mapping the hot spots. Regrettably, we don’t yet have launching capability. For that, we would have to go to New Zealand. But a better way would be to establish our own. In any case, we should have done that years ago.

These sensors detect long-wavelength bands of light (beyond the range of human vision) emitted from the Earth, whose intensity depends on surface temperatures. In mineral exploration, for decades geologists have used this science, called thermal infra-red spectrometry. It’s deployed in airborne surveys to map rock types identified by their heat signatures. Small fires obviously would be more readily detectable.It should be possible to establish an integrated early warning system consisting of real-time observation by thermal infra-red sensors continuously revolving at height over fire-prone territory, a downloading capability to a command and control centre which analyses the data, and a communications system that alerts the firefighters.

So far, no country has put into widespread operation such a system, although much work has been done. We could be first. Which would be only right because we have the greatest need. Hopefully, in the event that a Royal Commission or national inquiry into the bushfires is set up, such satellites will be part of its consideration.This system could be operated by the CSIRO in conjunction with the Australian Space Agency. But private enterprise would play a significant role and is already showing interest.

Today our general early warning system is based on forecasts, but we do not detect many fires early enough.An indication of the likely cost-benefit is Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s pledge last week of $2 billion for a National Bushfire Recovery Agency which will provide grants to farmers and small businesses and help to rebuild roads, bridges and telecommunications infrastructure lost in recent weeks.Affordable satellite technology is available that might help save lives, houses, businesses and properties.Not a week before Morrison’s $2 billion pledge the United States used similar technology to target an Iranian general in a moving car hundreds of kilometres away.

It’s not the future. It’s here.

AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF MINING AND METALLURGY INTERNATIONAL URANIUM CONFERENCE

ADELAIDE, JUNE 4/19

Australia is a treasure trove, a vast Aladdin’s cave of energy resources, virtually unique in the world. We have huge deposits of petroleum and coal and the world’s largest uranium resources. With the production of about 7000 tonnes last year, Australia ranks third among producers, behind Kazakhstan and Canada.

But something’s amiss. We can never agree on how the blessing can be enjoyed. On the contrary, subversive voices constantly rail against it. Uranium used to be the devil; now it’s coal. Even natural gas has one foot in hell. Wind and solar are the new saints but, alas, they’re asleep in heaven too much of the time.

Contradictions abound. We export uranium all over the world but have legislation prohibiting nuclear power at home. Is it really a virtue to send fuel to the rest of the world for power plants we’re too pure to have ourselves? For a nation dedicated to the rule of reason, or so we think, it’s time to repeal that absurd legislation.

The opposition to nuclear power, and its domestic proxy, uranium, reaches back a long way, to the 1970s when the great Alligator River ore bodies were discovered. It started in the United States, arising from the aftermath of the Viet Nam war, although its roots were in the British ‘Ban the bomb’ protests of the 1950s. Ralph Nader declared 1975 as the inaugural year of the nuclear debate.

The debate in Australia, which took the form of whether uranium should be mined, shook the nation for several years. The anti-uranium lobby didn’t stop mine development entirely but it did lead to government policies that prevented Australia from being the world’s number one uranium producer, which it could have been.

Without a doubt, the delays it caused enabled Namibia and Canada to develop deposits that took our place. Rossing had a grade of .7 of a pound, less than a tenth of the grade of Jabiluka, then the largest uranium ore body in the world. Saskatchewan’s Key Lake, which got into production, was discovered four years after Jabiluka.

Some of the policies were bizarre, even in the Coalition, which supported uranium. Here’s one. Under the Fraser government, Pancontinental’s Jabiluka ore body had achieved all the domestic approvals required for development, including an agreement with the Aboriginal people, which they enthusiastically supported at the time. But we needed export approval under the Atomic Energy Act.

I approached the Minister for Natural Resources, Doug Anthony, who was empowered to grant approvals. At the time, we had marketing arrangements with Japanese, Korean, American, and various European utilities enough to finance the mine. We thought it politic to present the British contract first, which we did.

The Minister said basically it was fine but that government policy required three price re-openers. Uranium contracts were usually for a term of five years with a pricing formula that gave some security to both buyer and seller. Doug Anthony disagreed with that, insisting there must be at least three times in the contract when the price had to be renegotiated.

When I told the British that, they erupted, aghast at the uncommercial of it. Nevertheless, they agreed under sufferance to one price re-opener. When I took it to Doug Anthony he said: “Tony I told you we need three.

So I had to go back to the British. They were apoplectic; using epithets to describe the Australian government’s understanding of how business is done that would astonish even a foul-mouthed comedian. But they agreed to a second re-opener.

I remember well the day when I went to a phone booth in Canberra, put my coin in the slot and dialled Doug Anthony. He picked up the phone and listened to me saying, “Doug I can get you two price re-openers but no more. The British say if our government does not accept that they will complain to their Foreign Affairs Department about how uncommercial we are.

After a pause, he said, “OK we can accept that. I’ll instruct my departmental officers to prepare the approval papers for my signature.

Hooray, I thought; we have it. No Australian government would dishonour an international contract, not even a Labor one that opposes uranium.

However, before Doug Anthony had a chance to sign the approval, Malcolm Fraser called the March 1983 election and lost. The incoming Hawke government imposed the infamous Three Mines policy and Jabiluka was stymied.

Later, at a dinner with Doug Anthony at his apartment in Canberra (just the two of us), he told me the reason for the price policy. His government was afraid that if the uranium price soared, as it had done in the past, Labor would accuse it of flogging off the nation’s resources at bargain-basement prices.

I went to Paris to tell Electricite de France that the new Labor government would not let Jabiluka go ahead. They were our biggest potential customers, willing to sign a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

I informed my friend, Jean Feron, the number two at EDF, of the news. After a brief silence, he shook his head sadly and said “Vous etes trop riches you are too rich.

But that was a long time ago. Uranium is not so contentious now. Both sides of politics support it, more or less, at least at the federal level. It’s ironic that the new Satan is coal, for the American coal industry was a major funder of the early anti-nuclear movement.

However, “The Times They are A-Changing, as Bob Dylan’s famous song said, and nowhere is that truer than in the field of energy.  The world is shunning fossil fuels in preference for clean energy forms. Nuclear power is one of these. It has the potential of being the world’s largest baseload power supply that has zero CO2 emissions.

After the public acceptance set- back of Fukushima, nuclear is powering ahead. It generates 11% of the world’s energy from about 450 reactors across 30 countries. And 13 others are building new capacity.

Nuclear is growing remarkably fast in China, with generation increasing by 25% in 2016 and 15% in the year after. An additional 47 reactors are under construction or planned.

Throughout the world, over 400 new nuclear power plants are in that category or proposed.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, felt it necessary to promise in his election campaign to reduce France’s reliance on nuclear from 75% to 50% by 2025. However, he has recently announced a ten – year delay in its implementation.  That’s effectively a reversal. The pressure is building on Germany to reconsider its phase-out policy imposed after Fukushima.

The arguments against nuclear power haven’t changed over the years. However, much has changed in the industry itself, and that has lessened their force.

Old fears that civil use could lead to nuclear weapons proliferation have proved baseless. Proliferation has occurred but through technology transfers from existing weapons states at government level.

Progress is being made in high-level waste storage. The technology has long since been proven but it’s the NIMBY politics of selecting sites that’s the problem. Finland appears to have solved this the first in the world to do so. It has a site on its west coast, a construction licence and is building away.

Australia is well endowed with stable geological formations that would be eminently suitable. In 2015, South Australia’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission released a report with the opinion that nuclear waste could be safely and profitably stored in that state.

Despite Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear’s safety record compares unmistakably well against other industries, particularly coal and gas. And significant improvements have emerged over the yearsfor example, passive cooling systems that cut in if the cooling circuit fails. That was the proximate cause of the damage at Fukushima.

Misunderstandings about radiation need to be corrected, however. For instance, of the 2,000 deaths at Fukushima, only one was attributed to radiation exposure. The rest was due to panic during evacuation. And nuclear plants emit no more radiation than the granite at New York’s Grand Central Station.

Capital costs, however, are a concern. They account for 60% of the levelised cost of electricity. But operating costs are low. And uranium, as fuel, contributes only about 8%.

In the1970’s, nuclear was cheaper than coal, except where coal mines were near the power stations they fed. That changed when activists began attacking nuclear’s economic advantage. Legal actions, regulatory over-reach, and interruptions of construction schedules were successful in driving costs up.

Currently, steps are being taken to drive them down.  Since in the West, plant designs tend to be customized, the normal learning curve in technology has not applied to its fullest extent. Standardized designs could remedy this, as is happening in China, where levelised costs are less than half of what they are in the West.

The efforts to reduce cost are achieving success. The World Nuclear Association in its update of nuclear economics says, “Nuclear power is cost-competitive with other forms of electricity generation, except where there is direct access to low-cost fossil fuels. And the recently released report of the International Atomic Energy Association says nuclear’s cost is competitive with solar and wind.

An exciting area of innovation and one where the meaningful potential for cost reduction exists is in small modular reactors. They’re defined as reactors of less than 300 MW. Their technology arose from nuclear installations in ships.

Because the modules are made in factories to standard designs, economies of scale apply, design improvements are facilitated and the regulatory process is simplified.  Passive safety systems requiring less redundancy further reduce costs. And shorter on-site construction times offer fewer opportunities for obstruction by activists, one of the major cost issues in the West.

Also, their small size makes them less scary to the public.

Since they have lower requirements for access to cooling water and are deliverable on trucks they can be used in remote areas. They’re more easily financed than large plants and can be readily placed in brown-field sites where coal-fired plants are decommissioned.

The Americans are taking SMRs seriously. Research is being generously funded by the Department of Energy and Silicon Valley is abuzz with entrepreneurs starting up companies to commercialize the technology. Eight companies forecast targets of nearly half the cost of conventional nuclear plants, on a proportionate basis.

Late last year, public acceptance of nuclear power received a dramatic boost from an unexpected quarter endorsement in the special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This could be a game-changer.

Contrary to expectations from this spicy broth of green politics and allied science, the report gives a resoundingly supportive view of nuclear’s role in mitigating global warming. It’s particularly refreshing because the Green lobby, so influential in the IPCC, has been such an ostrich in the presence of nuclear.

In calling for a heroic reduction in global warming of 1.5 degrees, the IPCC outlines pathways that could lead to it. It states, “Nuclear power increases its share in most 1.5 degree pathways to 2050. The growth is based on an estimated two and a half times expansion in nuclear generation.

The inescapable conclusion from the report is that without nuclear’s contribution there would be no possibility of achieving the IPCC’s objective. The authors must have decided the arguments against nuclear are overwhelmed by the urgency of its need.

Otherwise, they would have condemned it as they condemned coal.

The report states that nuclear’s “health risks are low per unit of electricity production and the land requirement is lower than that of other power sources.

Land requirement is noteworthy because both wind and solar take up huge amounts of acreage. To match the electricity output of a 1000 MW nuclear station, which needs one square mile, solar would require 75 square miles and wind 360.

Today, much publicity is being given to the devastating effect on electricity prices and availability caused by the rush to renewables due to the intermittence of their energy supply. With its steady, reliable and clean baseload, nuclear offers the ideal solution. The two sources are natural allies.

The times they are a-changing for nuclear, and potentially therefore for uranium. Uranium is a cyclical commodity with high price volatility.

In the early 1970s, uranium producers were so despondent they banded together to form “The Club in London, which was accused of being a cartel, although such a cartel would have been legal at the time in its member countries.

Its purpose was to manage production in order to encourage economic uranium prices. It led to the Uranium Institute, now the World Nuclear Association. Of course, ever since the Uranium Institute was established there has been no suggestion of antitrust activities. Lawyers present at meetings ensure that.

In 1978, when Westinghouse was caught in a short squeeze the price skyrocketed. They had foolishly sold short 65 million pounds at $12 and the price went to several times that, forcing them to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Ultimately the price collapsed, reaching an all-time low of $7 in 2001. It rose again in 2007 (helped by the flooding at Saskatchewan’s Cigar Lake) to $138 and then fell into an abyss where it’s currently languishing. At a spot price of $25 per pound, it’s well below the $60 needed to develop most new mines. And mines throughout the world are being forced to cut production.

While I’m mindful of the adage, ‘Predictions are hazardous, especially about the future’, I’m confident in saying that if nuclear power grows as reasonably expected, especially in China, future uranium prices are likely to enter positive territory again. Given the inhibiting effect of low prices on supply, which has been dramatically curtailed, the market will mainly demand dependent.

A turn in the cycle would send a long-sought signal to the Australian uranium industry and its patient investors.

Nevertheless, the big challenge of improving public acceptance is still before us.

Arduous though the task is to win hearts and minds, it must be undertaken. If not, a rollback we see threatened in some parts of the world, notably in Europe, will stall nuclear progress. In the USA there are as many people opposed to nuclear as support it not a situation for complacency.

Because the polls show that women in the aggregate tend to be less supportive of nuclear than men, it would be wise to encourage more female advocacy.

The IPCC’s endorsement should be central to nuclear’s case. It has the potential to recast the entire energy debate. If the world’s premier organization on Climate Change says that its target cannot be met without nuclear, how could anyone concerned about global warming oppose it?

Those who disapprove of nuclear, therefore, will have to rethink their position. They may not like nuclear but at the very least they would have to see it as the lesser of two evils.

The task then is to spread awareness of the report. Acceptance of its nuclear conclusions could even reduce somewhat the toxic polarity in the Climate Change debate.

Already the report is having an effect. Last month a group of about 100 Polish environmentalists and scientists, relying on the Climate Change basis of the findings, wrote an open letter to Germany asking it, as a neighbour, to reconsider its nuclear phase-out policy.  And, more recently, 80,000 international scientists joined in a declaration stressing the need for nuclear to combat Climate Change, citing the report.

All this exciting progress in the nuclear industry in safety improvements, waste disposal, cost reduction, small modular reactors, is passing us by in Australia.

Technology doesn’t stop just because a government doesn’t like it.

At the very least, the Luddite prohibition that has denied us the torch of progress for almost 19 years should be repealed.

We should no longer allow our government to say to us about a science that most of the world has embraced, “Thou shall not benefit from it, ever.

Let science dispel ill-placed fears and wild imaginings, and let our politicians give us the freedom to advance, along with the rest of the world.

Like water for fish, loyalty is a medium human need to survive. It surrounds the base of evolutionary imperative, forming an invisible shield for children and clan in the struggle against the slings and arrows of the world. It affords security to the sense of belonging and links the soul to the familiarity of place. Some form of it gives sustenance to all human relationships, which, as Aristotle reminds us, are the stuff of life. “Man is a social creature and naturally constituted to live in company.”

Loyalty can range into any combination of people that constitutes an identity, and, in the spiritual mind, further still to the Creator of all. In Michelangelo’s Sistine painting one can sense it flowing across the gap between the outstretched fingers of Adam and God.

Each of us has many loyalties, for the sentiment has several manifestations, some deeply personal, some dependent on institutions and ideas, and even some that stretch its normative application into the commercial realm through attachment to brands and loyalty programs in aid of selling products. There’s nothing wrong with commercial use of the word, but serious harm can be done in carrying its transactional nature into the field of real loyalty.

In times of war, its properties are demanded under pain of punishment. There it can reach its highest point, for in that domain life itself can be its due. Profoundly affected by the challenges of the First World War, Woodrow Wilson opined, “Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.”

In all cases, not only in war, standing ready for self- sacrifice in varying degrees, some great, some small, according to need, is loyalty’s signature. In this sense, loyalty can bee seen as an antidote to selfishness and its current scourge, narcissism. We observe this in successful sporting teams, where the demand for loyalty disciplines the member who hogs the ball. The same principle applies to all other kinds of teams, enhancing their performance. The sense of loyalty encourages the process of subordinating the ego of the individual to the higher purpose of the group.

But in times of affluence and security, when suffering the slightest inconvenience, much less self-sacrifice, is commonly shunned, loyalty’s force tends to fade, its relevance even questioned on occasion. In such a time are we. Often acts that would have been regarded as disloyal in an earlier age either are excused by rationalization or confused with loyalty of another sort. But true loyalty requires not only honest sentiment but conduct that arises from clarity of thought. It also demands restraint and discipline, two garments considered to be hair shirts today.

Much commentary is written these days about the erosion of trust in institutions. There are many reasons for this, but the looser sense that seems to be felt for the importance of loyalty, both on the part of institutions to the people they serve, especially banks, and within the public generally, contributes to the decline.

The Roman satirist, Juvenal, says about Rome in the first century, “We bear the evils of long peace; fiercer than war. Luxury weighs us down.” Speaking of the imperial city three hundred years later, Edward Gibbon comments on the decline in loyalty amongst the populace, referring to, “a degenerate people who viewed a change of masters with the indifference of slaves.” Those times were closer to the rot of decadence than ours, but we could do well to see the comments as cautionary.

The ancient Greeks gave us stories of loyalty that rose to inspirational heights. The most famous cites Penelope’s undying faithfulness to Odysseus throughout the long time he was away in the Trojan War and journeying home. For years she suffered unrelieved anxiety fending off the importunate attention of powerful suitors by promising to accept one of them when she finished weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law. By day she could be seen weaving, but at night she untied her work so no progress was made. Despite the passing of years with no news of her husband, she stuck to her subterfuge. For her, loyalty had no rhythm to disturb its constancy. Eventually, she was rewarded by his homecoming and killing of the harassers.

The one, however, that has the greatest effect on me is the drama of Sophocles’ Antigone. My mother, who was a classical actress, at one time with London’s Old Vic, played the heroine in a Toronto production. I had a walk-on part of the small boy who guides the blind priest, Tiresias. And so I was introduced to possibly the greatest play about loyalty.

Creon, the King of Thebes, had passed an edict that no one should mourn or entomb Antigone’s brother, Polyneices because he had attacked Thebes in a civil war. Leaving a deceased outside to the hunger of birds was viewed with horror by the Greeks. It was an unnatural act wholly rejected by the Olympian gods.

Notwithstanding the prohibition, Antigone, who deeply loved her brother, attempted to bury him and was caught. Hauled before the King, she admitted she knew about the edict but defied it on the grounds that the higher law of the gods overruled human law. For her defiance, Creon condemned her to be buried alive. She knew that would be the consequence and accepted it with noble courage.

As a boy of eight, I couldn’t distinguish the part my mother played from who she was herself, so I naturally considered she was the epitome of loyalty. She never disappointed me.

While some manifestations of loyalty are more profound than others, its deepest form stems from a personal sentiment that rides in the chariot of love. Family and close friends have the primacy, and for many, the force that created us all. I only had the foggiest notion of death at the time but even then I knew it was a serious punishment and that love motivated my mother to rise above it. Sophocles made it clear in her lines. Her appeal to the law of the gods was just advocacy in her cause before the King.

That is not to say love must be present in all types of loyalty. Indeed, the English word ‘loyal’ itself would suggest otherwise.  It comes from the Old French ‘loial’ which in turn is derived from ‘legalis’, Latin for ‘legal’. Its basis, therefore, is in law, both in English and in French, dating back to mediaeval times.

In that era, constant military turbulence created a need for stability that could only arise through the greater coalescence of power around authority figures. Allegiance to the feudal lord and the sovereign became an overarching imperative requiring the coercive force of law. And so, first, in France, a word was invented to describe the relationship, one that owed its philosophical basis to the need for order through the agency of law. Later the work of the word was expanded to cover all the uses we now give it, including faithfulness in a wider sense, a quality that stems from trust, the incorporeal adhesive that allows human beings to escape solitude.

The legal aspect of loyalty with its purpose of order underpins the requirement to be faithful to the authority of the state and show allegiance to its armed forces, particularly when chaos stalks the land. Since time out of mind, order and suppression of its opposite have been perceived as essential to human society. Indeed creation stories across the world describe the emergence of order from formlessness or chaos through the action of supreme authority.

In the material world, the state, which executes its functions through government, is its loftiest expression. Does everyone have to be loyal to the government as well as the state? No. In the Westminster system (which in some form or another is common throughout much of the world) the issue of dealing with political disputes involving government without endangering the fundamental order of society is enshrined in the concept of “Loyal Opposition”. As such, those not in government are given licence to oppose it so long as they remain loyal to its source of power, the state.

However, modern times have allowed the distinction to become blurred in a manner that suggests loyalty to the state is merely conditional. In a sense, it is understandable because what is most observable in the state is its operation through government and that is based on the consent of the governed, a proposition commonly accepted since articulated by Hobbes and Locke. For a very long time, that consent has been freely given, but recently its presence is being questioned by some.

In the United States, the perception of widespread injustice is so passionately held by some people that they have withdrawn their consent and declared a “Resistance” to the current administration. In some applications, it does not seem to be circumscribed by any sense of distinguishing government from the state.

The football quarterback, Colin Kaepernick is widely supported by opponents of the government when he kneels instead of standing for the national anthem at football games. Flag burning is rife and has been for years. The antics go beyond loyal opposition to government, for respecting flags and anthems is the outward show of loyalty to the state, an entity that stands above government in a sacred space of its own.

While Australia is excused from these extremes, loyalty to people and parties within the political sphere, not particularly robust anywhere in the world at the moment, is noticeably thinning out here. The constant toppling of political leaders on both sides of politics, together with the breaking up of traditional parties into fragments of independents and small parties, disclose a more fragile commitment to loyalty in public life than before. The major parties bear the brunt of this syndrome; loyalty is flaking off them like old paint.

Former Prime Minister John Howard says that a few decades ago forty percent of voters supported Labor, forty percent the Coalition and twenty percent were undecided or favoured minor parties. Now it is thirty-thirty, with forty percent spread over a suite of independents and minor parties, with a few uncommitted. The incendiary language about celebrating Australia Day further confuses the issue of to whom should we be loyal.

The political sphere is not the only place where vexing choices plague loyalty. I heard about one of these from John Paul Getty, the richest man in the world of his time.

At lunch in Sutton Place, his home near Guildford, he told me his oil company, which had a 50-50 joint venture with Mitsubishi, the major Japanese zaibatsu, had sent a tanker full of oil to Tokyo Bay. While it was at sea he received a telegram from his Japanese partner, the CEO of their joint venture company in Tokyo, “Turn tanker back”. Getty was in a quandary. A large portion of his wealth was tied up in that tanker and returning it would cause a huge loss he could ill afford. Nevertheless, he ordered the captain to comply with the telegram. A few days later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

The issue of loyalty here was of Grecian proportions. The Japanese man risked all in resolving the conflict between partner and state the way he did. If he had been found out, the most he could have expected would be a quick death by shooting. Access to raw materials, especially oil, was the principal reason Japan went to war. Unlike Antigone, he got away with the preference, earning the undying gratitude of his American partner.

Of course the government of Japan and no doubt most of its citizens would have emphatically claimed treason and from an objective point of view, they would have been right.  Whatever the judgment, however, the gravity of consequence, in this case, illuminates loyalty in the full magnificence of its splendour.

As in all virtues, loyalty can be carried to an extreme or be imprudently applied. There it becomes a vice, in the manner, Aristotle cautioned in his advocacy for the Golden Mean. Misplaced loyalty, such as in an abusive relationship or to a truly underserving recipient or loyalty once given that disavows its moral purpose, is justifiably abandoned, and indeed should be. For instance, when the evils of Hitler became apparent, loyalty to him abandoned its virtue and became a vice. Cases like that this are mercifully rare, but instances of lesser purport have arisen since which can be said to display the principle.

The social revolution of the 1970’s tested the limits of loyalty, particularly in the United States, as ferocious debate about the morality of the Vietnam War tore at its roots and inflamed passions to were honest people felt compelled to break the law and rip apart the sinews of order. The impulse was similar to what animated Antigone’s argument, despite the different circumstances.

When Antigone stood before King Creon and he asked, “Thou didst indeed dare to transgress that law?” she replied, “Yes; for it was not Zeus that had published me that edict.” Even a mortal ruler cannot override “the unwritten statutes of heaven.”

It’s easy to see how difficult drawing the line can be at times, and how mixed motives can blur the distinction. Would Antigone have reached for divine law if it weren’t loyalty to her brother that needed the support?  And in other cases, even ordinary personal opinion, as shallow as having a contrary political view, can cloud justification for actions through appeals to a higher law. That is made more likely in a society that generally tends to question loyalty’s primacy in affairs of state, for whatever reason.  Such seems to be the situation today.

While identity politics, so much in vogue today, doesn’t ablate loyalty it certainly confuses what one should be loyal to. The fragmentation it causes has a tendency to set up silos that concentrate loyalty through intense and narrowly based politicization, where connections outside the silo are not encouraged. The exclusion it promotes makes it difficult to extend loyalty beyond, to the nation or the nation’s civilization, for example, except in an attenuated form. Indeed loyalty within the silo is easily judged to be superior to and in conflict with them.

But fortunately loyalty on a personal scale, for family and friends, seems still to be as deeply felt as always, although I wonder whether its expression in some cases is as strong as it once was. Loyalty to a person is usually superior to that of a belief or idea, or an institution for that matter. Without loyalty, families are broken and friendships empty. Shakespeare, drawing on Seneca, speaks of closeness in friendships that cannot exist without loyalty.

“Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.”

For examples of personal loyalty, we often look to animals, particularly dogs. Their loyalty stirs us all. When a photo of Sully, President George H Bush’s Labrador, was seen sleeping beside his casket during the funeral service it went viral on social media, attracting two hundred and thirty thousand ‘likes’. The faithful dog’s sadness, wrapped in sleep by its dead master, reached across the airwaves and touched all who saw it with the beauty of its sentiment. There was no impurity of motive or questioning of justification, only the simplicity of sincerity in a fellow sentient creature, one whose instincts can instruct us all. It was especially moving for it contrasted so profoundly with our increasingly complex world, which so often steals our peace.

In our appreciation of canine loyalty, constancy is the most telling feature. It transcends all changes in circumstances, stands firm even in the face of wrongs and remains true to the end. In this regard loyalty can be like love, about whose nature Shakespeare’s sonnet advises,

“Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.”

Apart from its moral value, loyalty, like trust and love, can be viewed as a measure of mental health. It earns an entry ticket to a sense of well-being. Its implied promise of assistance in times of trouble is cognate with the evolutionary properties of the brain and so provides the emotional security that comes with being in accordance with nature. Also, the giving and receiving loyalty contribute to self –esteem for they demonstrate that one has the capability of conferring it and is worthy of receiving it.

The sense of belonging which loyalty so reliably infuses has a physiological consequence, for it stimulates oxytocin, often called the ‘bonding hormone’, creating a feedback loop that has the effect of increasing the level of dopamine, resulting in feelings of mellowness. It builds a bridge over anxiety. No fear of the future stirs it.

The process must be started by some act of loyalty, no matter how small. A simple thought will do, a flash of perfection in an imperfect world. It’s a moral act. The benefits are highly significant for they reduce feelings of stress, depression and anxiety, the scourge of modern civilization.

Loyalty is essential to the integrity of the individual in the sense of consistency between what one knows to be right and one’s actions, for it encourages a salutary tendency of reaching out from oneself to another, the known principle animating all positive relationships. Relationships, be they within families, marriage, friendship, teams, or outside the personal realm, and the loyalty they engender, define who we are. Expressions of loyalty disclose their state of health for all to see.

Tony Grey

He was big, big and noticeable, a tree among bushes.  They called him Big Bill. Fellow Aboriginals looked up to him, and so did whitefellas, for he was the chief tribal elder of the Bunitj clan which looked after the land in and around Kakadu National Park, the world-famous conservation he had helped create. His language was Gagadju, which slipped into English as Kakadu.

Over the years I got to know him in connection with my Company’s mineral exploration activities. We got on well, but I reached the point where I wanted to get to know him better, to learn about his views on life, for he was renowned for his knowledge of Aboriginal culture. A book had been written about him called The Kakadu Man. He was one of the few Gagadju men who knew the secret stories of the Dreamtime and the songs only the initiated were allowed to sing.

I drove over to his house at Cannon Hill, a couple of hours’ away from our mining camp to ask him if he would be willing to go camping with me. No telephone intervened. I half expected a refusal. Maybe it was a bit much to expect.

Hearing my Landcruiser approach he came out of his house, one of three wooden huts built over earthen floors, hidden among stringybark trees loved by birds. His wide face, normally quite fierce at rest, suddenly changed, breaking into a smile like the lively sun when it bursts through storm clouds. I often observed this transformation in Aboriginal people.

For a while, we talked about the weather, what some mutual acquaintances were doing, nothing of consequence. Long pauses separated what we were saying, an Aboriginal manner that I always thought was a polite way of avoiding feelings of pressure. At last, I felt it was time to bring up the point of my visit. I had no idea what his reaction would be.

To my relief, he seemed pleased to hear a whitefella show interest in his culture, one who was not an academic keen on analysis that could seem condescending. Not to be rushed, he spoke of going into the bush in a few weeks time.

A month later I went back to Cannon Hill with supplies – tents, blankets, food, cooking grill, but no alcohol, for Big Bill didn’t drink. It was the Gurrung season of August to September, at the end of the Dry when the winds carry warmth and burgeoning clouds warn of the hot storms due in the Wet season. Smoke plumes, from the age-old Aboriginal practice of burning off, smudge the horizon and add eucalyptus aroma to the air.

With Big Bill navigating, we drove through what Aboriginals call the Stone Country, a thick reddish mantle of Lower Proterozoic sandstone, weather- sculpted into shapes magnificent in their beauty and variety. There, over millennia, the people have painted on rock walls what they saw and imagined of life. No roads interrupted the wide flood plain we crossed, nor the slightest human trace interrupted the tranquillity of the land.

We passed into the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve, entry is forbidden to white people without permission. We stopped at a billabong deep in Big Bill’s country, not far from Indjuwanydjuwa, a large roundish rock on top of a slightly bigger one, standing isolated in a small red lily lagoon. Looking vaguely like a titanic human figure, it’s sacred, for it’s the spirit that created all that exists in this region.

The land here is ancient, so old it’s beyond the emotional comprehension of time. Change, except in the ceaseless cycle of the seasons, appears forbidden. The unbroken linkage with the past gives it a majesty unable to be measured. It’s a place where the Dreamtime connects with the present in a portal to the sublime.

We gathered some wood and lit a fire.  As the sun dropped behind the escarpment, a red blaze in the backlight for a moment and then dark, we cooked a couple of steaks on the grill. While we ate our meal I noticed two red dots on the billabong eerily gliding over the obsidian-black surface. Big Bill said it was a salt-water crocodile, the ferocious variety that claims human lives each year, and the totem of his clan.

He explained how rapport with the crocodile informs his life and composes a moral reciprocity, a mutual compassion. He must protect the crocodile and in return, it warns him of danger and gives premonitions of what lies ahead. In his mind, two worlds exist that together form the universe, the physical and the spiritual. The totem is the symbol of the bond that connects them. It’s part of his identity, allowing him to be accepted in the physical world and pass into the spirit realm at will. The red dots vanished, like embers suddenly trodden on.

In a minute or two, he mumbled, “Somebody coming.” I heard nothing; the birds had gone to their nests and there was no wind, only antique silence. We continued our conversation and he didn’t mention it again.

Half an hour later, I heard the faint sound of an internal combustion engine. The vehicle got fairly close to us but passed without our seeing it. Big Bill said it belonged to Aboriginal people. I asked him how he had sensed it so soon. He smiled and lit another cigarette in the chain.

With cigarette drooping, he leaned over to stoke the fire with a stick and asked, “You like the bush?” The answer was easy.

He said, “You like it. I like it. That means your feeling and my feeling will spread out tonight. City house, no can look at stars. Here, you feel in yourself better. In a house, you get blocked, have no feeling. In the bush you listen, feel dingo from far away. Somebody coming, you feel him before he comes. In the bush, your feeling spread out.”

As the moon came up, drawing strange and slowly changing shadow- shapes on the ancient land, he told me many things, wise things, in his broken English and gravelly voice. He spoke of how the Creator Spirit dreamed everything into existence, each one by one, and passed on the creative power to his creations, how the upturned rock sitting wryly on top of the escarpment near my Company’s camp is Gulyambi’s raft, which the great patriarch built in the Dreamtime to save his family in the Big Flood, how the rocks and everything in the land has a spirit that links all together in a living unity, how the people are at one with the animals, barramundi, crocodiles, goannas, and everything else in the land, how the Law is changeless, how the Rainbow serpent vents its anger when the Law is disobeyed, and much more.

“You got to look after country”, he said, “walk around and have a look. Good for country. If don’t look after country, rock, soil, everything, Earth say, ‘He don’t like me’. Give country life. He knows you are there. If you look after country, country like you will be with you all the time.”

There’s no need to act upon the land physically to give it benefit, as we in the contemporary world are prone to do, although Big Bill’s people do burn off to stimulate new growth. What is ultimately required is for the person’s mind to act upon the land by being there and connecting with it on the spiritual plane, a mind educated by awareness, a mindfulness given substance by past and present teachings.

The mindful action creates a union between the person and the spirit of the land. Hearing him speak of this, it seemed to me he was expressing an early form of mysticism, the way of thinking so important to religions over the centuries. If so, it could be the earliest still in existence, given the longevity of Aboriginal culture.

As he explained his ancestral truth I saw contentment in his face, a well- being so deep and peaceful that it demonstrated he possessed an identity and a unity with something other than himself that gave meaning to his life. I have seen such faces in churches and other places of worship.

Then the subject changed. He began to speak about returning to the earth, like trees and all living things and about his spirit remaining in the cave close to Indjuwanydjuwa, where he expects his bones will rest.

His thoughts turned to sadness as he reflected on the disappearance of his culture, of young people turning away from traditional life and failing to learn the lore A deep melancholy settled on him like fading eyesight as he spoke of his race losing its story, for without a story his people will disappear like a rainbow when the moist air dries. I saw a small patch of wetness glisten on his strong, wide face in the fire’s uncertain light, and understood.

Big Bill’s spirit has gone back to his country now, his mother as he would say. With it passed the last speaker of the Gagadju language, but one who has freely given his memory to those who survive.

Tony Grey

Our minivan turned away from the Heavenly Mountains, rising red and naked out of the barren steppe, into Xinjiang’s Kyzyl valley, a desiccated otherworldly domain for ascetics. Our purpose was to visit the Buddhist caves and their ancient frescoes. A tentative branch of the Tarim River gave life to a blanket of vegetation on the valley floor, wide enough to wrap a small community in. We stopped there for a short break.

After a few minutes, our guide told us that one of the locals asked her if we would give him and his wife and son a lift to Kucha, which was the next town along the Silk Road we planned to visit. Recently an accident had severed their ten-year-old son’s finger and he needed urgent medical care unavailable where they lived. Kucha, an hour’s drive away, had facilities. Of course we agreed, and the little family installed themselves in the back of the minivan.

They were Uighurs, Turkic – speaking people who migrated to Xinjiang in the 9^thcentury CE, supplanting Indo-European Tocharians. A nomadic horse-riding people of impressive skill, centaurs of the steppes, many became officers in Genghis Khan’s army. Now they are Muslims, and unloved by the Chinese.

The calm demeanor of the boy, who had not been given any painkillers, fascinated me. He sat there quietly, as if he had swallowed silence, diligently holding his separated finger wrapped in a blood- stained bandage. No movement stirred him, not even to look at the beauty of the mountains to our left as we drove east along the famous Silk Road, mercifully smooth and straight now, a product of the massive Chinese infrastructure investment that has driven GDP growth to such heights. No tears disturbed the composure of his face, nor any appeal to his mother who was sitting beside him. While, undoubtedly supportive, she allowed him the space his determination required.

But he must have been in extreme pain and wracked with worry about whether the surgeon he was to see could sew his finger back on. Would he or she have the skill? Would he get there in time? What would it be like to have an incomplete hand forever? However the only concession to such anxieties was a hint of concentration observable in his stony face.

There was hope lurking in that unmovable expression; there must have been or he wouldn’t be in the minivan going to Kucha. I was moved by the pathos of seeing that sad little boy looking after his finger, keeping it warm, trusting above all anxiety in the ability of the medical profession to make things right. I couldn’t help thinking about the chances of whether there would be the required expertise in this remote place. Regrettably we were never to find out. After dropping the family off at the hospital our guide suggested we continue our journey without waiting.

How to deal with pain has occupied philosophy and its predecessors in thought since before time. Out there in the cruel steppe, pitiless weather and ferocious warfare over the centuries have inured its people to the need.

I doubt whether the family had ever heard of Stoicism, but the Stoics, whose philosophy spread from Greece to animate the Roman civilization, and others in the West up to ours until recently, would clearly have recognized their thinking in the boy’s behavior.

The case put me in mind of Epictetus, the Greek slave in Rome who was such a prominent Stoic philosopher, influencing people as powerful as Emperor Marcus Aurelius. His cruel master, who had been a slave himself and was now a wealthy freedman, punished him for some misdemeanor by having his leg twisted. With unruffled composure Epictetus mentioned calmly, “if you continue to do that you will break my leg.” The master persisted with the twist and the leg broke. In a matter of fact voice, Epictetus said, “There, did I not tell you it would break?”

Epictetus, who held that, “Not things but opinions about things trouble men”, was able to endure the pain by mentally externalizing its presence in a manner that decoupled it from emotion linked to opinion about its existence, thereby reducing its severity.

Without knowing it, the little boy of the steppe must have done something like that.

Tony Grey

Trust is the force that breaks the chains of fear. It frees us to connect with others, to co-operate, to love, to release compassion, to realize our best potential. Functioning like DNA as it were, it’s an instructor in forming the building blocks of human relations. In its highest state it aids in the creation of altruism, the elixir that saves us from the meanness of the quid pro quo.

Trust is fragile but its need is strong. Without it, our natural social instincts become twisted into a fatal spiral of selfish isolation.  At that point we lose the redemptive assistance of others and fail to hear the summons of life. Societies, civilizations, sometimes trip into this dark abyss, the grim prelude to decadence. Regrettably, ours is stumbling around the edges.

As David Brooks said in The Road to Character, “We live in an age of institutional anxiety, when people are prone to distrust large organizations. This is partly because we’ve seen the failure of these institutions and partly because in the era of the Big Me, we put the individual first.”

We have a contemporary term for the Big Me – ‘narcissism’, a word that bears the cautionary wisdom of ancient times.

In the Greek myth, as retold in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the forest nymph, Echo, saw the superlatively handsome Narcissus while he was hunting and fell in love with him. But he rejected her, as he would with all the nymphs, for self – absorption barred relationship to another. Distraught, she was left mournfully wandering in the woods until her flesh wasted away and her bones changed into stone, leaving only her voice that forever repeats the last words spoken. Later, while hunting, Narcissus came upon a clear pond and stooped down to drink. There, he saw his reflection in the water and marveled at its charm, falling love with the lovely face. “How often did he vainly kiss the treacherous pool, how often plunge his arms deep in the waters, as he tried to grasp the neck he saw. But he could not lay hold upon himself.” In grief at his frustration he cried “Oh you woods, has anyone ever felt a love more cruel?”

Nemesis, intent on punishment for his transgression of the natural order, made him linger in self – love, unable to tear himself away from the watery picture despite the passage of time.  Gradually his beauty faded, his strength decayed and his human form vanished. In its place grew a little yellow flower the Greeks named after him.

Trust rides on the waves of human relationships. It cannot live alone, apart. The self – obsession of Narcissus precluded even its beginning. It needs human connection, absent in him. In less extreme cases, which is the norm, over -concentration on the self impedes the formation of connection, allowing disinterest to fill the gap and retard the growth of trust.

There can be many manifestations of trust, but two principal aspects define it. The most emotionally rewarding but the riskiest is faith in the benevolence of the other. The second is confidence (from the Latin ‘fides’ or faith) in the competence of the other. The two are often intertwined, but not always. Trust in aircraft pilots doesn’t require faith in their benevolence; known training and self- interest are enough. And competence is not needed for faith in the benevolence of a family member or close friend – perhaps some degree of it is but not much.

A breach in the first aspect can play out in the tragic drama of betrayal – a moral assault that stabs the heart of human relationships, sometimes in bloody form like the assassination of Caesar by his friend Brutus, but more commonly in non – violent but nevertheless distressing ways.

The deeper the trust, the more beautiful it is but also the more hurtful and consequential in its rupture. Essentially trust requires the courage to accept and expose vulnerability, the giving up of self in the humility of dependence. Therein lies the magnificence of the risk.

One of the benefits of this grand surrender can be the release from care and stress, albeit at the cost of temporarily abandoning the primacy of self – reliance. I thought like this when I was in the Intensive Care Ward after a major operation. When I woke up I was so weak I could scarcely move, just lie on my back and wait, alone in the alienating sterility of steel equipment and white tiles. And then I saw a little Asian nurse nearby, crisp and clean. She bustled around cheerfully, doing what was necessary. I thought how wonderful she was, caring for me, keeping me alive. I realized how dependent I had become, someone who had always felt pride in self-reliance. That dependence was trust, trust in her competence, trust in her good intentions and her honesty in giving them form. At that point pride melted away, giving way to a feeling of well –being, even though physically I was in some discomfort despite the medication.

The neuroscientist Paul Zak has shown that the reposing of trust releases the neurochemical, oxytocin, a pleasurable hormone that inhibits fear and anxiety produced in the amygdala. Strongly associated with empathy and sometimes called the “love hormone”, its role is to facilitate trust and attachment between individuals. The most notable case is the bonding between mother and child, indicating it has a marked evolutionary role. It also has an anti depressant effect. The relationship between it and trust is circular, the more one is produced the more the other is generated.

Trust is interlinked with hope. In its action hope is born, hope that the vulnerability exposed is safe. As Samuel Johnson said, “Hope is a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.”  And both are stimulated by gratitude, for we are naturally disposed to trust and lay hope in someone who has done us a good turn, even in a minor degree. Compliment a person and a little moment of trust arrives, in the garb of gratitude.

We deal with the issue of trust every day, mostly in trivial cases, but sometimes in instances that really matter. We have to, because it obviates the need for exhaustive weighing of the evidence.  It’s intuitive. At his home in Guildford, John Paul Getty, the richest man in the world at the time and not the most trusting, told me a story where he had to wrestle with one of these instances. He spoke of his younger years, when his oil company, not large at that point, had a 50-50 joint venture with the famous zaibatsu, Mitsubishi, for exploration and production of petroleum.  One day when shipping oil to Tokyo Bay, he received a telegram from his Japanese partner, “Turn tanker back.” Getty didn’t know what to do. That tanker represented a large portion of his wealth then and sending it home would cause significant loss. Nevertheless he trusted in the loyalty of his partner and ordered the captain to comply with the telegram. A few days later the Imperial Air Force bombed Pearl Harbor.

I have often reflected on this staggering demonstration of discharging the sacred duty of trust. If the Japanese authorities had discovered that telegram, the most Getty’s partner could have expected would be a quick death. After all, obtaining access to raw materials, especially oil, was one of the principal reasons why Japan went to war. And what about duty to country?

Trust inhabits many places. A particularly illuminating one is sport, the proxy for war the ancients, from Mesopotamia to Olympic Greece, invented, firstly to be played at funeral ceremonies of the famous and later to enliven the time when peace broke out or it was too hot to fight in armor. A sporting team’s success depends not only on the individual expertise of its members but on how well they play together, and that largely hangs on trust. Its magic empowers a championship team to beat a disparate one of all-stars, as often happens.

In football for example, the players take daring risks, such as passing the ball when they wouldn’t if they didn’t trust their teammates’ competence, or in their being in position. And, perhaps most of all, trust in their fellow players to rise to   supreme effort, particularly in a final match, inspires all to push past the ramparts of exhaustion and pain. Alive within everyone is the intent not to let teammates down; they acknowledge trust received generates responsibility.

In warfare, soldiers characteristically put their faith in comrades to ‘have their back’, naturally producing a reciprocal obligation. It’s well known they care more about honoring the sacredness of that trust even than winning battles. A corollary is the imperative to rescue comrades in danger. The Romans exemplified this in their highest award for bravery, the corona civica, which was for saving a fellow life.

Trust is aided by faith, religious or secular, in the basic goodness of humankind. That cast of mind makes it easier to believe that the putative trustee will do the right thing. When existential attacks are mounted against faith, faith of any kind, and it is destabilized, the general disposition to repose trust tends to be diminished. Because religious faith has always been such an important form, albeit not the only one for it’s possible to have faith merely in humanity for example, it seems to me that the decline in religious faith so emblematic of our age is more than correlative in the widespread distrust of institutions today.

The willingness to take the risk of trust and the measure of it are determined largely by where on the spectrum of pessimism-optimism people stand. The more optimistic, the more likely they are to trust others. They see the risk as lower. The same is true when the risk is applied to institutions, for the reposing of trust begins at the individual level and spreads outwards.

By optimism and pessimism here, I mean the disposition inherent not only in individual personalities, but also in the extent to which people are influenced by the normative inclinations of their society.  These vary throughout history. In the Victorian era Browning could say, “God is in his heaven. All’s right with the world”, and, and shortly after, the scourge of the First World War arrived to destroy the established order and set off a contagion of pessimism from which the Western World has not yet recovered.

The blight was aggravated in the 1960’s and 70’s by the incompetence and perceived biases of what Dwight Eisenhower pejoratively called the Military Industrial Complex in its handling of the Viet Nam affair and various social issues, especially unjustifiable discrimination and social marginalization. The demographic complexion at the time set the scene for especial disappointment, for the young, alive then in unprecedented numbers, demanded, as youth is prone to do, perfection in human affairs that ultimately stumbled against the palisade of reality. Their dashed hopes evolved into distrust in the organs of society they held responsible – generally all of them. And that frustration has followed them into maturity.

The global financial crisis in 2008, visited upon us by the misbehavior of the Big Banker Me, shredded all safety nets in such a catastrophic breakdown of trust that, for a worrying while, money transfers among banks froze like an actor forgetting his lines. Its effects are still footprints in the sand. And the satanic crimes of child sex abuse recently brought to light have pulled at the underpinnings of trust in religious institutions, already under attack by atheistic tendencies in contemporary society.

Cynics claim, with widespread acceptance, that we have entered a post truth age, a not unreasonable conclusion given the deconstruction of truth into different views of the facts and its dethroning from the absolute to the relative preached for years by postmodernists. And the calling of anything one disagrees with “fake news” further erodes the cause of truth.

Another sign of our era is the heightened attention paid to politics. Not content to stay within its usual realm of governance and jockeying for position within organizations it has intruded into virtually all aspects of life – teaching at schools and universities, characterization of literature and history, art, matters of gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, together with socio-economic disadvantage and advantage of all sorts. Talk shows on TV and radio, articles in in the press, posts on the social media, seem to have time for little else but issues infused by politics of one kind or another.

It used to be that in the minds of most people politics hibernated, awakening solely at election time. Only the odd snore before then disclosed it was still alive. Now, everything is viewed through a political lens; all definitions relevant to humanity are deconstructed to demonstrate an innate political motive or explanation. Relations among people, even in sport, once immune from the virus, are infected as never before. The tagline “Total Politics” fairly applies to almost all public discourse. Certainly the descent into angry partisanship so noticeable in the Western world these days has scratched the political itch but that does not explain fully the embrace of Total Politics.

Politics, by its nature is divisive; it pits one interest and opinion against another, pressing people apart, increasing the sense of difference and masking the underlying truth that links us all together. Some one said, “If the mathematical proposition 2 + 2 = 4 ever became a political issue, immediately there would be a party for and a party against”.

Trust is built on the awareness of sameness, not difference. One is more likely to trust a person or institution that shares a basis of perceived commonality. Politics is an enemy of that. The fragmentation it produces increases the tendency to find fault in the other, not to repose trust. Its heightened presence today has markedly contributed to the level of distrust we see in institutions and the people who run them – politicians, journalists, bankers, lawyers, corporate executives, academics, clerics.

The one possible exception to this dystopia, it can be argued, is science. The beneficial advances so manifest over recent times, the rigors of the scientific method and the stiff punishment so certain to follow aberrant behavior are all conducive to reposing trust, even in our jaundiced world. However, the odd brush with politics recently, such as the climate change controversy, and lack of comprehension on the part of large swathes of the public render its crown uneasy to wear.

Ironically science is responsible for a development that is having a further erosive effect on the existence of trust. In social media, its contemporary creation, the element of risk that characterizes trust in ordinary relationships is diminished, a blemish that reduces its nature to an entity of lower order.

Virtual friendships made in the land of the click do not normally require the exposure of vulnerability of the sort needed in the building of trust. Any reaching out is mainly without danger (unless one does something stupid or crosses swords with clickers whom one would never trust) for everyone knows that the connection to the so-called friend can be deleted at any time by the press of a finger by either party, an action provoking only a moment’s irritation, a superficial scraping of the ego’s knees, soon forgotten. It’s hard to imagine an equivalent in this to the gravity of betrayal that occurs in a normal breach of trust, except in the most unusual cases. I wonder whether the lure of pseudo friendships degrades the willingness to nourish real ones.

Though cynicism shares our lunch these days, trust survives. It must, for we are human. It may be under assault in our institutions but at an individual or small group level we still see the shining light of its truth. Personal relationships can be infused with it, so can teams of people. There’s relief in that since a tendency to trust others, according to psychologists, is a strong predictor of subjective well – being.

Tony Grey

Roman politician and Stoic philosopher Cicero warned, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” The Greeks also recognized the importance of history, inspired by Clio, its muse. She, whose name means to make famous, was the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. The open roll of parchment she carries shows how memory of important events and people can be kept alive.

Life’s purpose includes learning and part of that comes from observing what not only is but also was. History shows how what was informs what is. It lets us perceive how the past links with the present, becomes part of it, and survives into the future profoundly influencing it, and how the future looks back upon the present, as it becomes the past. Time, as history’s companion, discloses itself in an infinite chain of changes, interdependent and rationally understandable. At the foundational level is a unity linked to wisdom.

In this sense, one should consider history of all cultures, for much can be learned from people outside one’s own and all are worthy of respect. Indeed, Herodotus, called the father of history, writes about both Greeks and foreigners. However, history of a particular civilization, such as Western Civilization, has a more personal role for those living there. It’s fundamental to their consciousness, helping to create a unified sense of identity and pride.  The need for that sense reaches deep into the human soul, particularly in times of strife.

The longing for unity and identity sometimes creates history. After the divisive Revolutionary War, the thirteen separate colonies became the United States of America, forming a unique identity. And the Great Seal of the new nation proclaimed the philosophical truth (probably ultimately derived from Pythagoras) of “E pluribus Unum” – out of many, One.

There’s the rub. The concept of a unified identity combines with a postmodern distaste of Western Civilization to spark an assault on history today, particularly in the humanities faculties of universities, although not all.

If you want to attack a civilization, or a period in it, you should attack its history, for it’s a record of how identity-forming values are created and played out in the illuminating struggles of the human drama. The Egyptians did it; the reactionary successors of the revolutionary pharaoh, Akhenaten, tried their best to erase all memory of him and his unique religion. The past is full of such attempts.

When the Chinese staggered through the dark tunnel of Maoism all memory inconsistent with Mao’s thoughts in the Little Red Book was proscribed. The present killed the past and purified its corpse with ignorance.

Nevertheless, in a quiet triumph of the human spirit, the sense of history stayed alive during the assault, albeit furtive and naked. I saw this each time I visited China shortly after Deng Xiaoping’s granting of greater freedom. It was usually on business, but not always. Because I was interested in the subject, I swotted up a little on Chinese history before each trip. My knowledge was wantonly superficial, but surprisingly often my Chinese interlocutors knew even less than I. However what impressed me was the awareness and the reverence they had for the fact of their history, its existence – that they had an important one, that it contained glory, tragedy, politics, philosophy, art, science, religion, an amalgam of human atoms that made them what they are, unified them in a Chinese identity, even though virtually no details could be brought to mind. Arguably the consciousness of that helped kept them from existential despair in the life-sapping desert which took twenty-seven years to cross.

Chinese history study has shucked off its chains but, sadly, the forced forgetfulness engendered in the Mao period has not been completely purged in the older generation.

Today’s assault in the West stems, to a large extent, from a sensitizing recognition of manifest injustices that occurred in the past, some of which are seen as staining society now. Our unprecedented affluence in the presence of these flaws stimulates a sense of guilt among those who feel over-privileged, a guilt that needs assuaging by deconstructing and reconstructing our past. It’s also fed by a Marxist orientation that has essentially morphed from identifying and promoting the economically oppressed to the socially oppressed.

In a flagrant breach of the generally accepted rubric that events of the past should not be interpreted in the light of moral standards of the present, a political imperative has emerged aimed at perceiving Western history not as traditionally written but basically through narrow, politically correct perspectives – of indigenous people, race, gender, and class. This orientation springs from a desire to change radically contemporary society. Its project begins by making negative assertions about so-called white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism and other supposed oppressive systems, and continues by applying those attitudes to a revision of our history.

In the attempt, the scope of identity is shrunk. Instead of operating as a broad unifying force at the spiritual level it becomes fragmented, in danger of declining into a state as confusing as a pub brawl. In the melee the antagonists of Western history lose sight of their supra collective nature, emphasizing separate entities. In the shape-shift, they may not succeed in cutting the roots of our society but they do tend to obscure them.

Ironically something like this malaise has occurred before, but in a different way. European colonialists, so disparaged by history revisionists, attempted to snap the links connecting indigenous peoples they conquered to their history and the cultural roots it nourished. The justification was similar – existing culture must be remolded radically; and revising the way its past is perceived helps the process. The vector then was religious zeal; today it’s a secular equivalent. Both tap into the same instinct for orthodoxy, comforted with the same sense of self-righteousness. In the assault, history is distorted; cultural detriment follows.

After a sobering re-direction of conscience we are now able to recognize and empathize with the searing sadness that burns the souls of First Peoples around the world at the obliteration of so much of their remembrance and the richness it once bestowed.

We repent the error today and to some extent are encouraging a rediscovery, especially through indigenous language revival. But the revisionists are setting about a repetition of the mistake by applying a version of it to ourselves, presumably in a perverse hope of redemption. Self-awareness not self- loathing surely is a better pathway to that solace.

Clearly there should be room for debate in the study of history, for re-evaluation and reappraisal of facts in light of new evidence and fresh perspectives. Also, it’s instructive to view the mistakes and horrors of the past as historical facts to be learned from. But twisting history to support an objective of re-ordering society is a bridge too far. In addition, too much study time is taken away from what has produced the most influential effects on life. The most becomes the slave of the less. I have had this view confirmed in discussions with several history professors who are frustrated with the trend but are unable to counter it.

To make matters worse, history amnesia is rolling through society like a rising fog obscuring the ground we stand on. It’s starting in the very place where politically correct revisionism is taking place, in the universities. The eminent historian Niall Ferguson laments, “History at U.S. colleges is suffering a decline and fall faster than Gibbon’s Roman Empire.” According to him, undergraduate enrollment in history courses has fallen twenty percent in the last decade. “The Harvard history department of 1966 offered twenty-seven courses on twenty important historical subjects, five times more than their counterparts today.” Regrettably the same indifference threatens to catch Australian students, like a rip current carrying swimmers out to sea.

The eclipse of history, either through political tampering or neglect, has an inherent cost, one that goes to the heart of what it is to be human. It causes a terrible loss of perspective.

Facts of the past can be ignored, either through design or neglect, but the omission limits perception and distorts reality. Imagine a building with a hundred balconies on top of each other, each holding a person. If viewed from a drone above only one person is visible and that’s all the observer thinks there is. However, if looked at from the side, the full complement of the balconies is disclosed. The study of history does this; it makes visible not just the one person in the present but the many in the past and how they relate to each other to form a whole.

Our word for history comes from the Greek ‘historia’ which means enquiry or investigation. According to Herodotus, enquiry into the events of the past is necessary so “that the great achievements of people may not be forgotten”. They form a root system essential for shaping and sustaining identity.

Identity in a particular period mutates along the chain of later ones. But always, as time works in alliance with change, salient features survive, at least for a while, sometimes a long while, as we see in Western Civilization.

This is most marked in our relationship to the ancient Greeks, whose famous identity has resonated down the ages to form the foundational motif of the Western Canon. It expresses the first action to separate the discipline of philosophy (which at the time included science) from religion. And the first to fragment political power through oligarchy and then democracy. Its literary and artistic achievements are heralded in every era down to ours. And so are its science and wisdom. Pythagoras and Socrates belong to us.

History is vulnerable because it’s such a political discipline, victim of the changing winds of whim, both in the sense of what it covers and how it’s viewed. Cynics claim the winners write it and because of that it lies in the shallows of subjectivity. But others assert its very political nature can instruct. Polybius said the study of history is “a training for political life” and Churchill opined, “In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.”

It ranges beyond politics though, into economics, religion, ideas, science, art, society generally, indeed everything in the past. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the 1^stcentury Greek historian, said, “History is philosophy teaching by example.”

Abraham Lincoln elaborates on this idea when he says, after the end of the War Between the States,

“Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong as silly and as wise as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”

We live in a multicultural society today, one that affords us diverse cultural riches to be cherished. However, its benefits carry challenges to social cohesion. Over -concentration on separate identities tends to segment society and once the process starts it has a tendency to degrade into ever- smaller fragments.

Most people have a desire to belong, to be part of some group or another and in that sense be drawn into the comfort and strength of unity, but also they want to flourish as individuals. Wisdom lies in effectively dealing with the tension, not only in small groups but also on a larger scale. The prospect of resolution is aided when people are persuaded to concentrate on aspects of identity common to all in the larger community and the connectedness it encourages.

The past can be instructive here, albeit in some ways not acceptable today. Conflicts fomented by clash of identities and eventual melding of the parties into a form of unity have often occurred in history. Empires, as they rolled up different cities and states, were built on them. Sometimes they occurred over centuries through invasions, as in Britain, whose eventual unity was forged out of native Celts, Romans, Germanic peoples, Scandinavians, and Normans. A tendency towards unity from separate linguistic groups has been achieved in Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. And the United States healed fragmentation after its civil war, despite some grumbles to the contrary today. On the other hand, disunity has led to disaster; witness Russia in the First World War. We should not forget the Biblical admonition in Matthew XII, “a city or house divided against itself will not stand.”

Like a piece of sculpture, history can be looked upon from different angles, each one revealing a separate understanding. Herodotus collected oral traditions, putting them into an account of past events that preserved memory of what he called, “the great achievements”. Thucydides enquired from a more impartial, evidence-based and scientifically oriented perspective in his history of the Peloponnesian Wars. Modern research digs up more evidence for the discipline and extends it to the entire world, enriched by the help of archaeology and access to more documents.

Whatever the method used for discovering the facts, they can be viewed as an overall system of dramatic stories, a long exciting narrative of creativity, conflict and contrast that touches us personally. It’s how it most readily enters our sense of identity, for we can see ourselves playing different roles, understanding them, being affected by them. It’s no wonder that Shakespeare based so many of his plays on historical events and characters.

The grand narrative of history reaches far back into the days of myths, which in many, if not most, cases originally had some basis in fact. Over time the specific facts were forgotten, were embellished as they merged into imaginative stories, like Homer’s epics about the Trojan War (which actually happened), or the Gilgamesh tale of the Sumerians. The salient effect of the myths is that they forged a collective identity in the people, giving them self-esteem, useful pride, and a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves, not to mention a moral road map. History does this but performs it with facts.

We all love a good story and are most willing to absorb truths told in it. In the grand narrative of history there are many, sometimes uplifting, chapters of human achievement, sometimes cautionary tales, sometimes just fascinating aspects of human nature. Often the themes recur again and again, always in different form but nevertheless instructive through their commonality at the fundamental level.

As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but often it rhymes.” Through the rhyme, the past integrates with the present and touches the future. In the process we of the present can learn. It’s like a laboratory experiment that’s not reproducible but whose data can be used in another one anyway.

Stories of the “great achievements” trumpeted by Herodotus were to have their counterparts in the centuries to come, well beyond the marvelous period of the ancient Greeks. They encompass the military, engineering and law-giving feats of the Romans, the establishment of the Christian Church, which, drawing on Judaic tradition, laid the foundation of universal human rights, and later, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which gave us representative democracy.

They tell of the Renaissance, where Petrarch fathered humanism, the worldview still informing thought today, and of the other marvels of the period – modern banking, which enabled vast developments of commerce, Gutenberg’s printing press, which disseminated information to all classes, the discovery of the New World, and some of the finest art ever produced.

They explain the Age of Reason, where Francis Bacon’s insistence on empirically testing theories gave birth to modern science, and the Galileo controversy, which set the world on a course that shook science free from religious restrictions on thought. On the political front they inform us of the Treaty of Westphalia after the Thirty Years War, which places the inviolability of sovereignty at the centre of the international system.

The stories feature the intellectual and political advances of the Enlightenment, where the ideal of reason wrested primacy from emotion in the conduct of human affairs and classical liberalism founded by John Locke became the way of the future. They uplift us to the moral mountaintops where the battle for rights shook the world in the American and French revolutions, and bring us down to earth by detailing the inventions that kicked off the Industrial Revolution through radically improving manufacturing processes.

One of the most important stories is about the creation of the welfare state by Bismarck in the mid 19^thcentury and its extension in the West after the next century’s horrific wars, among other purposes as an antidote to Communism.

Throughout the yeasty narrative, its illumination of creativity in science, philosophy, the arts and literature has given inspiration to all, as has its speaking of how moral idealism spread into public discourse, making an unchallengeable case for freedom and the worth of the individual.

All along the line of time the narrative tells us not only of the great achievements but also the depths of evil to which some of the dramatis personaehave descended, horrors that we must ever be on our guard to avoid repeating. Its alloy of good and bad creates an image of ourselves today; its voice is our own.

The anthology of the stories works to craft our identity, tell us who we are, with all our greatness and baseness. They inspire us; they sadden us. But whatever they do, at the deepest level they speak to our spiritual core, which is after all where identity lies. If we live in the Western World, this is our epic, whether we were born here or have arrived from a place with different traditions, and whatever our station in life. An awareness of what we have inherited can have a tendency to bring us together, give us a sense of belonging to a house that includes all. We should know it and defend it. Western history, despite its portrayal of faults, is something to be proud of not cringe from.

Like the quality of mercy, gratitude blesses both those that give and those that receive. It animates our moral sense, which Charles Darwin said is a sentiment ”originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men”. That sense vibrates with approbation in every touch of gratitude.

But it seems that in our over-stimulated society we find little time to feel it and less to express it. The squeeze of unmerciful time is not the only culprit; the sense of entitlement and complacency born of safety and affluence is even more harmful. Entitlement smothers the sentiment and complacency distracts from its need. Too often their baleful tendencies relegate it to a minor role to be worth a cue only when the drama lags, or when politeness requires a throw away line. Does that matter? I think it does.

What is gratitude? Its Oxford dictionary definition of “the quality of being thankful and readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness” can be applied on several levels. We rightly express thanks for a job well done and a business, professional or social transaction satisfactorily carried out. And civility is usefully oiled with frequent thank yous. All these are worthwhile, certainly to be encouraged, but gratitude can also live in a deeper place. That’s where I wish to concentrate.

At that level gratitude rises in response to a benefit received that’s undeserved and where the benefactor doesn’t expect any return. It’s the type of benefit mentioned by Seneca in his essay On Benefits. “It matters not what is done or given, but with what attitude, since the benefit consists not in what is done or given but rather in the intention of the giver.”

It may seem counterintuitive but not everyone perceives value in gratitude. Stalin sniffed “Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.” Aristotle didn’t include it in his list of virtues for he saw its character of being indebted as demeaning since it implies an acknowledgement of inferiority. Some intellectuals, like La Rochefoucauld, were skeptical about its application, sneering that in many instances it merely covers a secret desire to obtain more favours in the future.

Stalin’s cynicism can be dismissed as the flippant excuse of a sociopath, but the views of the others need examination. Gratitude is certainly a recognition of indebtedness and that can indeed imply a sort of inferiority.

Yet, acknowledgement of inferiority doesn’t have to be perceived as humiliating. In one vital case it clearly isn’t. Since before history, humankind has stood in awe and wonder before a higher power and shown reverence by giving thanks for benefits bestowed, particularly life itself. There, feelings of indebtedness and accompanying inferiority transcend their common form and become humility, a loveable quality that elevates, not depreciates value in a human being. In that state, acceptance of inferiority lies not in an indebtedness indicating superiority of one human being over another but rather in a recognition that each one of us is but a very small part of the whole. That has no sting for it applies to all of us equally, and the fact of our puniness is manifestly true. This perception is as relevant today as ever; it applies as much in a secular as a religious society for the higher power can be present either as a personal God or an impersonal force such as nature.

From this source of expressing gratitude we’re encouraged to amplify its realm to include our fellow human beings, in a form that retains the virtue of humility, the quality that dissolves shame.

And so, unlike Aristotle, I consider the indebtedness of gratitude as wholesome, not demeaning. It floats above the ordinary character of debt and connects the beneficiary to the benefactor in a bond that enriches the spirit of both, even beyond the value of what is given. At that level a deep sense of wellbeing arises and no loneliness exists. A type of unity is born, like the unity implied in certain languages that have the same word for host and guest. Classical Greek does and so does French.

Seneca has virtually all philosophers (not Aristotle) in agreement when he states, “There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn as in doing it.” And Aesop, one of the most perspicacious observers of human nature, said, “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” He implies that such a soul is above even considering whether gratitude’s indebtedness is demeaning.

I don’t consider myself a noble soul but whenever I feel grateful, and that needs to be often because, like most of us in our society to day, I have much to be grateful for, I see my indebtedness in a positive light, like a second benefit.

Along with many others I had a teacher in high school who had an enormous influence on me. In fact, although neither of us knew it at the time, his influence would be life –changing for me. His name was Mr. Cook and he was a teacher of classical Greek. He was not a large man nor of charismatic personality but quiet and calm, not particularly noticeable, but kind. When I was in Middle School I decided that I wanted to learn Greek, but though I had taken Latin, I had no Greek. I went to Mr. Cook and asked him whether he would let me join his class. Without hesitation, saying only that he expected me to study, he agreed, even though I was a year behind. He went further than that. On his own time, after class he tutored me until I caught up. There was no expectation of payment or even thanks, nothing. It was really not part of his job; he just did it out of natural generosity.

Over the next years until I was ready to take the final Ontario- wide exams Mr. Cook was a constant inspiration to me. He made me love the subject, even to the point where I actually studied.

In those days there were no student loans, let alone free tuition for helping students to go to university. You either had to pay the fees, which put most families out of contention including mine, or win a scholarship. There weren’t many of those and all were competitive at the provincial level. I fervently wanted to go to the University of Toronto but I knew that a scholarship was my only hope and a forlorn one at that.

As it turned out I was lucky. With Mr. Cook’s tuition and encouragement I was able to win the Duke of Wellington prize in Classics, which paid my way through university. I feel I’ve never owed anyone more than Mr. Cook, other than my family. Without the selfless benefit he bestowed on me I would’ve left education at the door of my high school. The gratitude I’ve felt over the years makes me appreciate even more what he did for me and his intention in doing it. Ever since, I’ve been well disposed towards teachers.

I don’t know how many people express gratitude out of desire for more favours, as La Rochefoucauld claims. There must be some, for hypocrisy drips its poison over a wide plain.  But that doesn’t rule out the existence of gratitude; it merely defines away what may seem gratitude but is really specious.

Gratitude is a positive emotion, arising when we receive a benefit we know we don’t deserve. It stimulates feelings of harmony and internal balance, and reminds us that the benefit giving rise to it indicates we’re valued and have much value in life. But it’s also a moral sentiment – fostering prosocial behavior. It’s largely responsible for initiating and maintaining desirable social relationships. Sometimes the natural empathy it engages can even lead into the terrain of altruism.

The human psyche is so infused with it that Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all the others.” And Seneca, his astute fellow Stoic, underlined its virtue by condemning its opposite – “it is no surprise that among the large number of extremely grave vices, none is more common than those stemming from an ungrateful mind.”

As a Renaissance figure profoundly influenced by the Stoics, Shakespeare was in accord with this when he put in the mouth of the Third Citizen in Coriolanus, “Ingratitude is monstrous”. For the Bard, a monster is a creature, sometimes human, that’s unnatural, contrary to nature, a condition particularly abhorred by the Stoics.

While the grateful attitude perceives benefits as undeserved, alongside it another attitude has grown up with a different perspective. In contemporary society many people are led to believe they’re so worthy, so “awesome”, that they deserve any benefit they receive; they’re entitled to it. The two attitudes are completely incompatible. Feeling grateful for something to which one is entitled is impossible. It’s not that ingratitude is actually favoured by those who feel entitled; it’s that there’s no room for gratitude, largely because its essential quality of humility is absent. In their egos the space is too cramped for it.

Being unable to feel gratitude for receiving a benefit has a cost – the sensibility to appreciation is adversely affected.  Appreciation, in the meaning of recognizing the quality, value or significance of something, is an essential part of enjoying it. Enjoyment can be nullified by taking things for granted, an outlook that arises from the sense of entitlement. Without appreciation the perceived nature of a benefit received is belittled, in extreme cases virtually ceasing to exist; in either case enjoyment is blighted. Nevertheless, even though those who feel entitled show this tendency, sometimes they actually do appreciate what they receive. However that form of appreciation is anemic; it’s unnourished by the juices of gratitude, which create the energy necessary to lift it to a state where the highest enjoyment resides.

The dictionary definition of gratitude is underlined by its Latin origin, ‘gratus’, which also means ‘pleasing’. Gratitude is truly one of the most pleasing of emotions. Perhaps as such it has an evolutionary role. It encourages people to link together in relationships that not only promote peace but also encourage the giving of mutual help in the face of threats to survival. Can you want to hurt someone to whom you feel grateful, or not want to help? The answer to those questions is linked to trust, the great social adhesive.

Feeling grateful activates the brain stem region that produces dopamine. Also, like anti depressant medication, gratitude increases circulatory levels of the neuro-transmitter, serotonin. The result is a positive effect on general health – improvement in sleep, lower fatigue and increased cardiac function. Part of the effect is an increased sense of wellbeing.

The gratitude- inducing neuro- transmitters play an important role in reducing allostatic load (bad stress), a rising threat to health these days for it’s a leading cause of depression. Causing the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex to shrink, bad stress can result in reducing memory and cognitive functions. It can also increase free-floating anxiety through abnormal growth in the amygdala. Other factors release helpful neuro-transmitters too, but gratitude is among the most valuable.

Gratitude is one of the commonest emotions, indeed so common that until recently psychologists have shown little interest in examining it. But now they do. Studies have shown that regions in the medial pre-frontal cortex are activated when participants report grateful feelings. This area is associated with empathy and feelings of stress relief. In their book, The Psychology of Gratitude, Emmons and McCullough point to grateful people scoring high on agreeableness and forgiveness and low on narcissism and envy. They too are more likely to be optimistic, tending to find good in bad circumstances. In addition, concentration on what we can be grateful for diminishes feelings of resentment and envy, also regret, disappointment and frustration. These findings tend to accord with what Seneca opined centuries ago, “A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

Gratitude has a transcendent quality. It encourages people to connect with something larger than themselves; in some cases it can be scaled up to apply to another nation. Once, I saw this occur first hand.

One of my Sigma Chi fraternity brothers at the University of Toronto was Ken Taylor. I remember staying up late one night in the fraternity house talking with him, as first-year students often do, about adjusting to university life and our futures. I could not have known that much later Ken, as Canadian Ambassador to Iran, would shoot to international fame for his actions during the Iranian revolution of 1979.

In November, fanatical Iranian students invaded the American Embassy and kidnapped fifty-two Americans, holding them as hostages. In the riot, six others managed to escape and found their way to the Canadian Embassy. Ken and his wife took them into their house and hid them for several weeks. At that time, the fury of the revolutionaries in Teheran was so intense that the Taylors would have been murdered if what they were doing were discovered.

Ken not only hid the six but he provided important intelligence to the American authorities and eventually arranged for their escape, procuring Canadian passports and cover for them in a visiting Canadian film crew set up for the purpose.

After the hostage crisis was resolved and Ken’s actions were revealed, a rush of gratitude spilled across the Canadian border in radio and TV programs. Not for a day but every day for weeks, sometimes scaling the ladder of hyperbole. The North American neighbours, while generally well disposed towards each other, display a certain coolness, even testiness at times. But not then. Gratitude swept across the whole border, 6400 kilometres long, like the warm Chinook wind that blows from the Continent’s North-West in the middle of the winter, melting ice and tempting flowers to bloom. Canadians felt honoured that gratitude was so effusively expressed and Americans felt good about expressing it. For an important moment, millions of people sensed a human feedback loop arise that bound them together in an embrace of unity, a spiritual flash of permanence in a world of change.

There, gratitude showed its essence – an act of thanks for a benefit bestowed not necessarily deserved, earned or sought after. Ken Taylor didn’t have to take the enormous personal risk he did. No one asked him to do it, nor did he expect any recompense. He just did it because he was a good man. Americans responded to that with warmth. And both nations were drawn together. Entitlement didn’t get a look in.

To stop the venom of entitlement dividing us, reducing our resilience to adversity and stealing our joy we need the antidote of gratitude. It links us together, transcends expectations and gives vent to feelings far superior to the dull acceptance of what’s deserved, particularly when that’s often not actually deserved at all but only thought to be. But as in human tissue, it needs exercise, and that requires time. Perhaps the rising interest in the subject from science and psychology will encourage people to believe that its obvious utility is worth the effort.

Tony Grey